“I have to get to Vladivostok and you have to help me,” she said. Up ahead they could just make out the lights on the bridge that spanned the ravine. Once they were across they would be out of the market and the neighborhood would gradually get better.
“Why?”
“I’m going to America.”
“It’s too late to go to America.”
“Not if I leave from Vladivostok. But I need you to get me a travel permit.”
“Do you know how far that is?”
“I don’t care.”
“Nine thousand versts.”
“Will you help me?”
“It ’ll take you a month, maybe more. It’s hard traveling. What about your children? Berta, be reasonable. It’s impossible.”
“Don’t tell me what’s possible. I want you to talk to your father.”
“I’m not even speaking to him. I can’t ask him for a favor.”
“Misha… I need this.”
“He makes me grovel. He can be awful.”
“Then ask your uncle.”
“What makes you think I’m on better terms with him? He’s just like my father. They even look alike. People are always getting them confused.”
“Then ask somebody.”
“I don’t even know where to begin. Berta, I love you, but you’re asking too much.”
“Do I have to list all the things I’ve done for you? Is that really necessary?”
Yuvelir took in a deep breath and let it out in a rush. He shook his head in consternation and kept his eyes on the ground in front of him as he walked beside her. “Sometimes, I don’t know how you get me to do these things.”
She laughed and took his arm. “My poor dorogoy.”
“And I suppose you’re going to need rail tickets?”
Yuvelir walked her all the way back up the hill and slept on the sofa in her parlor. The next morning he had breakfast with her in the kitchen because the breakfast room had been closed up. She sat with him at the long worktable in the center of the room and watched him sip his tea and butter his scone. He wasn’t used to getting up in the morning, so he wasn’t very talkative and didn’t even complain about missing a night with his friends.
THE CHERKAST train station had been donated by the rich merchants of the city as a testament to their wealth and good taste. It was supposed to rival Iaroslavl Station in Moscow. It had a medieval spire on one side, an elaborate rotunda of glass in the middle, and two round moderne turrets on either side of the large double doors. It was costly to build, but it gave the people of Cherkast a beautiful railroad terminal and the merchants a sense that they were every bit as wealthy, as cultured and as worthy of respect, as their Muscovite counterparts.
That was before the war. Now when Berta walked in through the massive double doors, carrying her bundles and trailing her children and Mitya, the gardener’s helper, whom she had hired to see her safely on the train, she found that most of the expensive tile floor, the one that had cost thousands and thousands and months of negotiation, was covered with men, women, children, and all their belongings. There were families, old couples, and wounded soldiers who had been treated and released; most were stretched out on blankets on the cold floor, napping, smoking, and playing cards. Against the north wall were recovering cholera patients who had been dumped there because their beds were needed by the wounded. Children made a game of leaping over them, until their mothers saw what they were doing and screamed at them in panic.
Berta had expected this. She had heard what the train stations were like and had prepared for a long wait. But when she walked in that day and actually saw it, smelled the multitudes, heard the hacking coughs, and saw the mass of bodies stretched from one wall to the other, she had to force herself to enter.
“I don’t want to go in, Mameh,” Sura said, holding on to the folds of Berta’s skirt.
“I know, darling,” said Berta, “but remember, I said there would be lots of people. And you said it would be all right, because they were just like us. Just people who wanted to take the train, remember?”
Sura nodded wordlessly but kept clinging to Berta’s skirt. Samuil spotted a boy with a bird in a cage and went over to investigate. “Don’t go far,” Berta called after him, but he didn’t need his mother to tell him not to get lost.
When Berta looked around for a place to put her things, nobody would meet her eye. They all ignored her and let her stand there with her bundles and her frightened child clinging to her skirt. She had to step over several old men, peasants who grumbled at the intrusion but made no effort to give her room. Then a young woman in the crowd motioned her over. She was a mother too and had a daughter about Sura’s age sitting next to her on a mat. She was a peasant in a rumpled skirt and felt boots, who looked up with puffy, sleepless eyes. Berta and Mitya moved forward on tiptoe, stepping over several people before getting to the little place that the woman had made for them by gathering in her bundles.
“Thank you. I don’t know what we would’ve done,” Berta said, spreading out a mat.
“That’s all right,” the young mother replied in broken Russian. “An old man gave me this spot two days ago. He said he’d had enough and went home. Funny thing was a train came shortly after that, but he wouldn’t have gotten on anyway. He was too old and not very strong.”
Berta and Mitya made a little encampment by arranging the bundles in a circle around their mats and blankets.
“Mameh, I want to go home,” Sura whispered, her round, frightened eyes soon filling with tears.
The woman’s little girl watched her, glancing at Sura’s doll. She was a pretty girl, dark like her mother, with soft eyes and a full mouth that looked as if it had been stung by a bee.
“Why don’t you show this nice little girl your doll?” Berta said to Sura.
Sura looked over at her and shook her head.
“Why not, it might be fun.”
The little girl got up and took a cautious step forward. “No,” Sura said, clutching the doll to her chest.
“That’s not very nice,” Berta said.
“I don’t care. I don’t want to be nice. I want to go home,” said Sura, tears spilling down her cheeks.
Berta shrugged helplessly. “I’m sorry,” she said to the little girl. “Maybe another time.”
“That’s all right,” the woman said, drawing her daughter to her. “She’s shy too. We understand.”
Berta suddenly sat up. “Samuil?” She jumped to her feet and Mitya did the same. “Samuil!” she cried out, looking in every direction.
“Here, Mameh!”
She whipped around and found him over by the boy with the bird in a cage. “Oh,” she sighed in relief. “Well, don’t go far,” she called out. He ignored her and went back to the bird. “It’s just like him to get lost. He’s always wandering off.” She sat down, ignoring all the exhausted faces that were glancing over in her direction.
“They are such a worry, aren’t they?” said the young mother. “They like to keep us worrying from one minute to the next.” Her daughter lay in her lap and she stroked her long hair, rocking her back and forth like a baby. “We almost lost this little one last winter… she had a high fever. I thought she was going to burn up.”
“Sura had a fever like that two years ago. The doctor said she was lucky to survive.”
“Lucky to have a doctor, I’d say. There was an old woman in our village who came whenever there was sickness, but I never believed in her spells. She cut a length of Olga’s hair and wound it around a knife and put it under her bed. That was supposed to cut her fever.”
“Couldn’t you get a real doctor?” Berta asked.